Notices by Zach Weinersmith (zachweinersmith@mastodon.social), page 3

10-year-old told me today that chanting things, e.g. "eat the worm!" or whatever was a distinctly boy activity.

What are weird some things your kids have perceived as gendered?

Garrison Keillor is really strange to me career wise. He wrote exactly one outstanding novel - his first. Then ever after he wrote the same novel, only worse, and with more weird sex stuff. He also wrote very good (really!) poems early on, and then over time what he counts as poems is just aw-shucks Minnesota stuff. It's like he noped out of a lasting literary career for kitsch.

Holy shit, I thought my computer was just running really slowly, but it turns out it was *entirely* due to Chrome. Please Google, just close down.

Parenting
Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/dad-2
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I've seen a number of writers remark on the fact that it's stupid to wait around for inspiration to try to writing something good. This is of course true, because often inspired writing is, in retrospect, terrible, while lines you suffered over are quite good.

BUT, there's this other thing, which is that as a project wears on, there's inevitably less inspiration, more just carrying out the initial vision. This is where, to my mind, the real craft often comes in.

You say it’s inappropriate
I feel I should go for it
I’ve practiced much, and I’d like to kazoo ya

It’s a plastic tube, that you can blow,
Is it fun at funerals? Maybe so.
The only way to know is play Hallelujah

BVVVV BVVVV BVVVVVVVV BVVVVV
BVVVV BVVVV BVVVVVVVV BVVVVV
BVVVV BVVVV BVVVVVVVV BVVVVV
BVVVV BVVVV BVVVVVVVV BVVV-BVVV-BVVV.
BVVV

The first rule of Etymology Club is, wait hold on did you know that the word "club" meaning a group of people with a common goal is of 17th century origin and refers to the idea of a mass of people as being like a club, in the older sense of a cudgel, what were we talking about?

Mildly interesting:

A lot of etymological roots for male/female are fairly insulting to women, e.g. ladies and gentleman = loaf-kneader and well-born, wife and husband = woman and householder, HOWEVER knight and dame is just the opposite, where a dame is the boss of a household and knight originally means something like boy or servant.

Good morning.

I'm at UT Austin for a lecture and a nontrivial number of students, of diverse gender and ethnicity, are carrying huge plastic jugs of water? Or sitting with huge jugs of water? What are they afraid of?

Weird thing with Bea Wolf: I've repeatedly had adults my age compare it to Shel Silverstein. This is flattering of course but just feels totally out of left field to me? Maybe there just aren't a lot of poetry touchstones in books for kids that aren't Dr. Seuss-ish?

Anyone know why there are suddenly a bunch of articles about EV sales slowing down? Like, data seems good? https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61344

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/grinch
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #economics

So, I got some good news this week on a new project, that along with Bea Wolf is part of a long term plot to seize people's children and turn them into English majors, and in particular the kind of English major who has reservations about who's in the Canon but can also quote from Chaucer, Pope, Dickinson, and Kipling upon request.

Possibly Shakespeare should've been in my list.

Consciousness
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-4 (click for bonus panel)
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #god #ai

Writing Bea Wolf 2 (finishing the story) is the hardest writing I've ever done. Doing narrative in poetry while also telling jokes is like having to tapdance while juggling greased water balloons. The worst thing is that now and then whole chunks come out perfectly, but most of the time it's an absolute doom-grind where I spend hours working on 100 words, then I hate almost all of them. In sum: blarg.

I feel that in all the controversy with google Gemini, we've lost sight of the fact that they've invented a hilarious sitcom character. This is the first really good AI joke, no? Imagine a moment in a plot where a character is so concerned with representation and diversity that they make diverse Nazis. I wish I'd come up with that.

Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/bot
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai

Posted this yesterday on the Bird site, because it's where I'm regularly told I'm anti progress. So far no bets.

I've really come to think that in many cases, the demand to be more optimistic is just an in-group identifier, not a confident belief in actual reality. I've been genuinely surprised how many people will openly say some version of "I didn't disagree with anything specific, but the book didn't hype me up so I didn't like it."